One Thing I Wish I'd Had When We Started Reddit

I recently invested in WorkRamp, an employee training platform, that equips companies with the tools, experts, and resources to build great teams. Their mission is one I think all startups will benefit from, and I wanted to share more about why I related so much as a founder.

It’s taken twelve years, but my co-founder Steve Huffman and I have been able to watch Reddit go from idea to the 4th largest website in the USA.

A lot of things happened during that time: we hired our first employee (in fact, Dr. Chris Slowe is back at the company with us now!), we built a team that spans time zones across the US and Europe, and we maneuvered the obstacles of ownership.

None of these challenges were easy—but frankly, none of them were unique, either.

Every startup has to figure out these types of questions: How do I develop a compensation strategy? How do I maintain cogency across offices scattered worldwide?

One of my biggest regrets has been not having mentors along the way and my time as a Y Combinator partner was a chance to be that resource for the next generation of entrepreneurs. But I learned most things the hard way. Paul Graham’s essays were a good starting point, but all the real lessons came from hacking it ourselves based on the raw, honest stories from other founders -- usually over a drink. Then we still had to apply it ourselves.

The experience of being a founder, as well as advisor to countless early stage founders, is why I am excited that WorkRamp is building on their mission to help companies develop the best teams by releasing WorkRoom, an online community where experts can share their once-secret playbooks. Whether you want to learn how to train data scientists like Airbnb to how to develop technical sales reps like Mixpanel, WorkRoom gives you access to experts at leading companies.

I’ve always been a big believer in the power of shared knowledge (there are over a hundred thousand Reddit communities and counting) and I’m glad to see that WorkRamp is bringing that philosophy to the enterprise by creating a community of the most revered companies, including experts from Airbnb, Uber, and more.

If Steve and I could have had an inside view into how the greatest companies (already) solved these challenges, we could have have put more focus in our community and scaled our own mission that much faster. Everything from the tools the best companies used; to the expertise they developed; to how they implemented their programs; would have been useful—and today, that’s available for everyone on WorkRamp’s new expert community, WorkRoom.